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Episode 63: To The Constitution, With Love · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: summer of 1974,
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was glued to the television for most of the day,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: and for the first time in my life,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: my parents didn't insist that I shut it off,
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: go outside,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: do something useful.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: That was Watergate summer,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: the weeks that a national drama played out all day on public television,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: hosted by Robin McNeil and Jim Lehrer,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: and interspersed with experts who explained the ramifications of testimony by
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Washington House staff
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: for President Richard M. Nixon's possible impeachment.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Then,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: on July 25th,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: a first-term representative from Texas' 11th Congressional District,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: a large African-American woman with a commanding voice and demeanor,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: used her introductory 15 minutes to express her love for a Constitution that had
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: permitted and protected American slavery.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I recognize the gentlelady from Texas, Ms.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan, for the purpose of general debate, not to exceed a period of 15 minutes.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mr. Jordan.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Chairman,
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  SPEAKER_01: I join my colleague,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Rangel,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: But we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: We the people.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very eloquent beginning.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was not included in that we the people.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: But through the process of amendment,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: interpretation,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: and court decision,
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  SPEAKER_01: I have finally been included in We the People.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Today, I am an inquisitor.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: and hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: That woman was Barbara Jordan,
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  SPEAKER_02: and I cried as I listened to her speech,
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  SPEAKER_02: not just because it was so beautifully written and delivered,
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  SPEAKER_02: but because it expressed the love I also felt for my country,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: for its history and its laws,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: at a time when Nixon was being held to account for his crimes.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Presidents weren't above the law, Jordan argued.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was not just the right,
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  SPEAKER_02: but also the duty of the legislative and judicial branches to apply the checks and
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: balances that the founders intended.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Those same founders who ensured that slavery endured for almost another century,
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: an illegal racial caste system for almost another 200 years.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is, of course, the same constitution and nation of laws that President Donald J. Trump
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: just elected to a second term,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: and the entire Republican Party plans to wipe their collective asses with in the
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: next four years.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: and it is up to us to stop them.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is why I wanted to bring Mary Ellen Curtin,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Associate Professor of Critical Race,
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  SPEAKER_02: Gender,
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  SPEAKER_02: and Culture Studies at American University,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: on the show.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Curtin is the author of She Changed the Nation,
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  SPEAKER_02: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics,
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  SPEAKER_02: a book I have been looking forward to reading since I heard that it was in the pipeline.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: A slightly informal note,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: listeners may recall that the last episode featured David Greenberg's biography of
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Congressman John R.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: I had hoped that the Lewis episode and this one would bookend the election of our first woman president.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: As a precaution, Mary Ellen and I taped two endings.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: We had to use the wrong one.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: But listeners,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: although it is going to be a hard fight,
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  SPEAKER_02: as Barbara Jordan famously said on July 25th,
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  SPEAKER_02: 1974,
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  SPEAKER_02: my faith in the Constitution is whole,
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  SPEAKER_02: it is complete,
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  SPEAKER_02: it is total.
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  SPEAKER_02: I still believe in freedom.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe in you.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: So join Mary Ellen and me for this episode of Why Now,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: where history and politics meet the challenge of today.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm your host,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Claire Potter,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: professor of history emeritus at the New School for Social Research,
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  SPEAKER_02: a contributing editor at Public Seminar,
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  SPEAKER_02: and the author of The Political Junkie Substack.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is episode 62, To the Constitution with Love.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Mary Ellen Curtin welcome to the show thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
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  SPEAKER_02: it's really exciting to talk to you about your book,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: She Changed the Nation,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: because I have probably been waiting for most of my life for someone to write a
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: biography of Barbara Jordan.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm kind of shocked that it's never happened before.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Let's kind of get going with you telling listeners why you were drawn to the topic and why
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody got there before you.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's a very interesting question.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: I do have to correct you a little bit in that there's a lot of juvenile biographies of Barbara Jordan.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: And there's other books that really just sort of trace her and use her as an
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: example of American exceptionalism and the greatness of America and look at the
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: struggle of this exceptional human being.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much that's the story.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Mary Beth Rogers did write something prior to this, which has a lot of detail in it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: But it doesn't have the,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: to my mind,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: the background and the depth and the texture that Jordan's story demands.
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  SPEAKER_03: And I think that this comforting story of achievement and American exceptionalism appeals to people.
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  SPEAKER_03: And it is important to talk about her being the first.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously,
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  SPEAKER_03: black people and women had been excluded from American politics through
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: disfranchisement and culture and all kinds of nefarious means.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so it is important when a black woman gains a place at the table and some power
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: that that be acknowledged and recognized.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: So being the first is part of her story, but it's not the whole part of her story.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: In fact,
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  SPEAKER_03: that narrative doesn't really convey how why her story is so linked to the civil
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: rights struggle.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: So for example, people will say, oh, well, Jordan was elected on the third try.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: What that narrative that seems to support her as a very determined and gritty person,
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  SPEAKER_03: which she was,
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  SPEAKER_03: leaves out,
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  SPEAKER_03: though,
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  SPEAKER_03: are very important civil rights cases that had to address redistricting and
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: malapportionment and getting her a district in Houston where she could actually win
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: a seat in the Texas Senate.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so that political history of disfranchisement and how the civil rights movement
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: fought against those laws that made it illegal for black people to join the
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: Democratic Party and then had malapportionment and all other kinds of disfranchisement,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: all of that had to be cleared away before Jordan could achieve what she did.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I do feel like this is a very pathbreaking book.
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  SPEAKER_03: because it's the first one to really make clear and explicit why she's important,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: how her struggle to achieve her place in politics was really part of the movement's
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: shift from the streets to the statehouse and how she and people like her really saw
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: politics as an extension of the civil rights movement.
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  SPEAKER_03: They weren't just, you know, I'm a politician now.
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  SPEAKER_03: I'm a black politician.
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  SPEAKER_03: I'm a woman politician.
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  SPEAKER_03: I am part
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  SPEAKER_03: of a movement that is now seeking to use the power of government to make the ideals
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  SPEAKER_03: of the civil rights movement real.
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  SPEAKER_03: And that was something very conscious on her part and on the part of her peers.
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  SPEAKER_03: And I think that theme of putting her within the context of the civil rights
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  SPEAKER_03: movement was something,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: to answer your question,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: was really drove me to pick up this subject.
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  SPEAKER_03: Because to me, as somebody growing up in the 70s, she was just out there as an extraordinary individual.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: And we didn't really understand, and I didn't understand later on when I was in graduate school,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: What her connection was to the larger social movements of the time,
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  SPEAKER_03: to the Black Power movement,
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  SPEAKER_03: to the civil rights movement,
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  SPEAKER_03: to the feminist movement,
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  SPEAKER_03: all of that had somehow been stripped away from her.
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  SPEAKER_03: And she was just floating out there by herself.
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  SPEAKER_03: So as someone who was trained in Black history in graduate school,
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  SPEAKER_03: who had written a book about convict labor and convict leasing,
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  SPEAKER_03: I took up this project as a sort of a project that appealed to me as a successful,
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  SPEAKER_03: an example of black people's success in America,
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  SPEAKER_03: but it's a much more complicated story than that.
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  SPEAKER_03: And my training in black history and in women's history,
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  SPEAKER_03: I think took me a long time,
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  SPEAKER_03: but I think really did help me ask the right questions and look to the sources that
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: to explain the significance of Jordan.
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  SPEAKER_02: First of all, great answer.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I hope there are a lot of graduate students listening and can actually go back
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  SPEAKER_02: maybe and listen to that again about the
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: depth of education and experience and reading and archival practice that you had to
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  SPEAKER_02: develop as the biographer to write such a magnificent book.
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  SPEAKER_02: But I'm also interested in what you say about juvenile biography too,
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  SPEAKER_02: because there are a lot of juvenile biographies of Fannie Lou Hamer,
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  SPEAKER_02: for example,
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  SPEAKER_02: but really two serious books came out about three years ago around the same time.
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  SPEAKER_02: Similarly, Susan Brownmiller, who I'm writing a biography of,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: wrote a juvenile biography of Shirley Chisholm in 1969.
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  SPEAKER_02: And only recently have we had serious work done on Shirley Chisholm by Anastasia
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Kerwood and Barbara Winslow.
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  SPEAKER_02: So there is this sort of sense of like Black figures are historical figures that
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: should be used to inspire,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: but let's not dig so deeply into them.
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  SPEAKER_02: So Mary Ellen, tell us the story of Barbara Jordan's life.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Here's someone who grew up in segregation and ended up in Congress.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
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  SPEAKER_03: And she and Andy Young really were the first two people to do that.
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  SPEAKER_03: So they are peers.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And as much as we know about Andy Young and his activism and his significance in
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: the SCLC,
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  SPEAKER_03: I would argue that Jordan's path is really one that shows the significance of Black
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  SPEAKER_03: women and
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: in the civil rights movement.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: We often talk about women being behind the scenes.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan is not behind the scenes.
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  SPEAKER_03: She's a Black woman leader.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: And she was a Black woman leader who was supported by the women in her community from the beginning.
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  SPEAKER_03: Jordan is really a bridge from segregation to the post-civil rights era.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: But that background in segregation, that story of Black role models,
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  SPEAKER_03: Black community,
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  SPEAKER_03: Black church,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: Black teachers,
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: inspiring her,
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  SPEAKER_03: making her believe that she could achieve these things in the United States is an
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: important foundation.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Another part of her foundation is her legal training in Boston University,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: something she undertook with confidence because of her career as a
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: college debater, a star college debater, where she defeated white opponents as a young woman.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan was 23 when she finished law school.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: She was 30 when she was elected to the Texas Senate and 36 when she was elected to Congress,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: where she served for six years.
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  SPEAKER_03: So hers is a story of a young woman,
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  SPEAKER_03: an ambitious young woman who gets caught up in achievement,
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  SPEAKER_03: personal achievement,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: but then begins to understand the significance of the civil rights movement.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: becomes part of it,
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  SPEAKER_03: adopts a stance of leadership,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: is supported by her community,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: particularly the Black women in her community,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: and pushed to go as far as she can,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: takes advantage of the connections she develops in Texas,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: the legal openings of court cases,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: to pursue her vision of how the Democratic Party could really become an instrument
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: of social change and social betterment.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: And never loses sight of that and inspires many others along the way.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: And also has very concrete achievements.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: The resignation of Richard Nixon,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1975,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: and her outspoken support of the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: the image for America of a Black woman who could be president, who could be on the Supreme Court.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan did so many things to change and introduce the possibilities of Black
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: women's leadership to the nation.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Her community knew it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: The nation didn't yet.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that in terms of the nation's acceptance of
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: What she could achieve, I think she goes beyond chisholm.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the polls at the time shows this, that when Americans are asked, what woman do you see as president?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan's name is always at the top of the list.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel she has an amazing impact legislatively, politically, and in terms of
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: stretching our imaginations of the possible.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, she was also physically imposing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: She was five foot 10, I think you say.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And she spoke with a kind of authority.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Your first chapter is called The Voice.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, it's what I remember from being a
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: young person watching the Watergate hearings and listening to her speech, which was just riveting.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I had never heard of Barbara Jordan before.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was 14 years old.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, here's this woman talking to me about the importance of the Constitution.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And she just had me in the palm of her hands.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: So how did people,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: other than this 14-year-old white kid sitting in front of the television,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: respond to Jordan?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, from very early on, her voice was part of who she was.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: As a debater,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: she developed that voice even further,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: the tone,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: the particulars of pronunciation,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: the cadence of repetition and knowing when to pause and when to be slow.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: But you're right.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Her deep voice made an impression,
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: particularly on the men,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: because Jordan spends a lot of time in the company of men.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I have a quote from Leon Higginbotham.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: He met her before she had ever been elected.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: And he just said, boy, did she stand out because of her voice?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: It really made me take notice of her.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think she understood it made her a more powerful person and made people listen to her more
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: than they would have otherwise.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think it was an affectation.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: All the evidence says that this is something that she developed as a very young
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: girl in the presence of her grandfather.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: and developed over time through speaking contests and being applauded for it by her
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: family and her community.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a very interesting thing how this personal trait of hers in this context of
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: politics becomes something very powerful.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: She also understands how unusual it is,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: for women to be in those positions of power,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: but she doesn't shy away from it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: She understands why she's there.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: She is there to make a splash, to make people listen to her.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan uses the tools that are available to her.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: She understands that she's a minority,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: and minority candidates and minority politicians have to use the leverage available
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: to them to try and get what they can for their people.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: Her voice was part of that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And let's back up a little bit because there are institutions, of course, that she benefits from.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: And this may seem counterintuitive to many of our listeners,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: but in a way,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: segregation is among them because she goes to an excellent,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: excellent high school.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I think a lot of history of education people would acknowledge,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: desegregation actually tore apart
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: excellent Black secondary institutions.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: So there's her high school.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: There is going to Texas Southern University,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: where again,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: she is supported as a Black person and not relegated to second tier status.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's her sorority.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: And sororities are back in the news because of Kamala Harris's sorority and how
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: they have supported her candidacy.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: So can you talk a little bit about this?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then the church.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Let me not forget the church.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: So can you talk a little bit about what she took from all these institutions and
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: how they propelled her forward?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: These institutions obviously provide the foundation.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: The other institution that I think ought to be emphasized are unions.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: Houston is a black working class city and Jordan is from the working class.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: Her father was in a union.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: She grew up in the Fifth Ward, which was poor but working class neighborhood in Houston.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Her family was poor but stable.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so when she's walking down the street to go to school,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: she sees black businesses,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: but it's segregated.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that really eats at her.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: It supports her.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: But when she starts going to college and has to take the bus,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: it has to take for the first time takes this because she's kind of cocooned in that
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: segregated world for a long time.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Her,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: her life is going to church and then being with her family and in the school and
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: adults did a lot to protect children and to make them think,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: encourage their dreams and make them think of their worthiness.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: And they were, and she was persuaded of that completely.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: They had, um,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Black professionals come in and speak to them.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: And again, this is during the Cold War.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: So you're right.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Her experience of segregation is very different from that of her parents and her grandparents,
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: who really suffered much more from the evils of white supremacy and economic exploitation.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: Her life she sees as one of possibility, but she also understands the limits.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: She lives in segregated society and that really grates at her.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And she understands that these segregation,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: school segregation is not equal,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: even though it's good,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: it's still not equal.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so she becomes involved in this movement to push for schools integration and
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: her community is really behind her.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: But as you said, one of the things about the churches that it provides in Houston is
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: is the beginnings of using the churches as an institution to push for political rights.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Her minister, Reverend Albert Lucas, was doing this in the 1940s.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: He was statewide chair of the NAACP.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: He was key in the lawsuit to end the white primary.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: The plaintiff,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Lonnie Smith,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: was a deacon in the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: which was Jordan's church.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so he had no problem combining religion and politics in his pulpit.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: And he urged all of his members to join the NAACP and he was a very powerful figure.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was a model as a speaker,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: a model as an organizer,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: and someone who really understood the role that black people could play and were
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: playing in the Democratic Party in Houston.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so those institutions,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: things like being precinct captains,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: the churches,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: but also the role of Black women in organizing voter registration in places like
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: churches and nightclubs,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Those were political sites.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Those were places where not divorced from politics in the 40s and 50s.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: People are registering to vote in those places.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jordan benefits from all that.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: 20 years after the
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: Smith v.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: Allwright,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: where you have Black people voting in primaries,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: really helps to set the stage for her for when she is ready to take on that challenge.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: She loses.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: She loses twice because of disfranchisement laws and efforts to dilute the Black vote.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: But her involvement in the civil rights movement is recognized.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And really,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: again,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: as you say,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: what segregation does is provide her with that base,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: that voting base that she's going to need in order to push her way
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: into victory in 1966.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm going to push you ahead even a little more to 1972,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: when Barbara Jordan becomes the first woman to be elected to represent Texas in her
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: own right.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: There had been other women who had been appointed, but she was elected.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: So she's not just the first Black person to do that from Texas.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: She is the first Black woman.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think our listeners need to attend to is there is this tendency to sort of lump
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: all these women firsts together.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: But Barbara Jordan is very different from someone like Shirley Chisholm,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: who kept herself very apart in many ways,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: did not socialize with other people,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: One Susan Brown Miller,
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: when she was doing her first profile of Shirley Chisholm,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: said that Chisholm wouldn't eat with her.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Jordan is very different.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: She sort of comes in with a determination to join the establishment and make her mark on it, right?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yes and no.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of think that the differences among these Black women politicians has been exaggerated.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Look, I think they have much more in common than they have differences.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: what happens is that when they're so new, our journalists don't know how to write about them.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so they just fall back on these old tropes about like what they're wearing,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: if they're married,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: are they attractive?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: Are they feminists?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: And Molly Ivins is totally guilty of this.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: The profiles,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: in other words,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: of these women that emerged,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: not just of Chisholm and Jordan,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: but also Curtis Collins,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: who's from Illinois,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: And Yvonne Burke from California really don't talk about their history of activism
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: or why they're in politics,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: which is to pursue social justice and the civil rights movement.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it is fluff and a lot of it is trying to create these divisions about appearance.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: So this happens a lot with Jordan and Yvonne Burke.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: she's so feminine, Jordan's not so feminine.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of this totally conforms to racist and sexist tropes that have been used
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: against Black women since the time of slavery.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: It is Jezebel and Mammy all over again.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the number of times that this very objectionable word is used in the context of
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan to defeminize her
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: To,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: critique her,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: criticize her,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: diminish her by emphasizing her as a masculine presence somehow,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think really just shows how journalists just don't know what they're talking
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: about and they don't know how to write about her and they don't know what her
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: motives are.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now, you talked about her wanting to be in with people in power.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes and no.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: To what end, I would say?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's really important to understand how new it was for Black people to have
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: these positions of power.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: You see this in,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: for example,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: if you read about Barack Obama's time in the Illinois Senate,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: he got a lot of the same criticism by,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: oh,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: he's kowtowing,
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: he's hanging out with the white folks.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: Perhaps, but to what end, right?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: To what purpose?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: He's trying to exert some influence.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: He's trying to
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: feel out the realm of the possible in politics for black people.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Jordan had really good training of this in the Texas Senate.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that in Texas, especially, you have friendships and cordial relations across party lines.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: The irony, of course, is that there's one party in Texas.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's only the Democratic Party.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's split into liberals.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's a one party state.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's split into liberals and conservatives.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: They don't like each other, but they do talk to each other.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Even some conservatives,
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: though,
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: don't like other conservatives and a lot of other liberals don't like liberals.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: I try and tease out the difference between.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: those personal relationships and the political goals of the liberals of the
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Democratic Party,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: which remain central to Jordan's agenda.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: Those goals are economics, fair taxation.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: This has been something that's been part of the liberal agenda in Texas since the New Deal.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: And they're trying to get fair taxes and a corporate tax.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan supports this to the teeth and they almost succeed in getting it.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing, of course, is voting rights.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And not just rights, but the right to a meaningful vote.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: This is very important.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: Can you use your vote to elect representatives of your choice?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: That is another thing.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that means really taking on these other forms of voter dilution that were very
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: common and which things like the 1975 Voting Rights Act was seeking to correct.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that you can't just pull out one incidence where she says this,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: one place where she does that.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: What I found is that when I looked at the whole picture and dug very deeply into
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: all of the documents and the newspapers,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: black and white,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: it was clear to me,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: Jordan has a mission,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: a goal.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that goal is to use politics as a tool to further the goals of the civil rights movement.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Her methods may not have seemed so radical all the time, but her goals often were.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I would put it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also thinking,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: of course,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: that she comes in at a time when feminism is beginning to have an impact on politics.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: I believe Bella Abzug is elected the same year.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's a great book that Bella Abzug wrote, which was her sort of diary of her first year in Congress.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the night before her swearing in, I think she's speaking it all into a tape recorder.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, well, the first thing we're going to do in Congress is stop the war.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's like, all right, what else is on your list, Bella?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: But Barbara Jordan is coming in with a wave of people who are like-minded in that
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: politics is supposed to change things.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, post-Watergate, there's the class of 74.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there's this huge push toward actually reforming the body itself.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: How does Jordan respond to that?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think again,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: it's interesting because she has these relationships with powerful people because
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: she's part of the Texas delegation.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so her previous experience in the Senate also kind of schooled her that if
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: you're going to be effective,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: you have to learn how to leverage your vote.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: That means playing your cards close to your chest.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: When the time comes,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's good that people don't know how you're going to vote.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean you're not with them.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: but you're also thinking of the people who disagree with you and who might want to
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: concede things to you if they think that will help you get their vote.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a game of poker.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Once those habits are learned,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: it's hard to unlearn them and think,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: oh yeah,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: we're all just like being open and honest and trying to undermine the power of
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: committee chairs,
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: for example.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: That never goes away.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: She's only in Congress for six years.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: The time that she's there,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: is still really the time of powerful committee chairs.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: She understands that, and she tries to use it to her advantage.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Claire, it's quite interesting.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: In terms of formal power,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Barbara Jordan was never even the head of a subcommittee on the Judiciary Committee.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: And yet,
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: through her relationships with people like Peter Rodino and others who are on the
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Civil Rights Subcommittee,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: she really,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: managed to exercise a good deal of influence
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: But she doesn't have a position of formal power.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And she knows that.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: So all of this adulation that is aimed her way,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: she understands that to an extent that exaggerates the power she has.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's not real.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: We all know how perception can shape opinions.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: If,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: in other words,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: other Democrats thought they were going to be in primary races where the black vote
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: was going to matter,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: they might reach out to Jordan.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: And they might expect, well, I can do this for you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: What could you do for me?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: This is all very unstated, understated, you know, and assumed, but it's there.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: So in other words, her power doesn't just rest on her as an individual.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's how people are also thinking about the black vote during the primary.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: And this is also what's helping to change Congress and the Democrats in 74 and 76.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Once these individuals realize that,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: like Peter Rodino,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: that he's got to appeal to the black vote in his district,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: that's going to force them to look at someone like Barbara Jordan a little bit differently.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think she's necessarily unwilling to play that to her advantage because she
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: really doesn't have much else.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: She has no formal position of power.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: She's a junior member.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: And that's true from the day she starts to the day she ends in 1978.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned that she's only in Congress for six years.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's a reason for that, which is that she is becoming increasingly disabled by multiple sclerosis.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that ultimately affects her decision to step away.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, she dies at an extraordinarily young age.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: She's only 59 when she dies.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that is something that she keeps private for most people,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: but there's something else she keeps private too.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if you could talk to our listeners about the deft and sensitive way
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: you wrote about Barbara Jordan's personal life.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think these are two separate issues, her disability and her sexuality.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll just sort of take them one by one.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, her sexuality, so interesting because the seventies is a time when lesbianism is
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: But it's still kind of an open secret.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel that you can see this in Houston and in the way that she develops
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: friendships and relationships with with other lesbians and part her partner.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: Nancy Earle.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't speculate about other relationships she may have had,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: but it was clear to me from how important lesbians were in her political organizing,
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: even in Houston,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: even before she meets Nancy Earle.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: There are women who are running her campaign,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: Her Brains Trust,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: who I have PhDs and they're the first black women to have PhDs in sociology from UT Austin.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: They know what they're doing.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: They know how to read data.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: They know how to organize an office.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: They know basically like the nuts and bolts.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: And many of them had been involved in voting rights, again, prior to even to Jordan running for office.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: But not all.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Some were inspired by her.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: That sort of inner circle is just politically important to know about.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: In terms of her own personal life,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think these women,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: along with her family,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: give her space,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: safety,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: security,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: a place where she can be herself after she goes out and does battle with the
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: outside world.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that becomes especially important when she moves to Austin.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: In Houston, she is kind of, as I said, cocooned.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's a large black community that she knows fully well in Houston.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so she's working with white liberals, the liberals in the Democratic Party.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: She has good relations for the most part.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: There are people that are suspicious later on when she's serving in the Senate.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: They think she's a little too conservative.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: But when she moves to live in Austin, she's really put in this very
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: awkward situation of always being basically the only black person in the room.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Austin is a place of socializing.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: She's always has to go to parties.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: She's bringing a guitar with her.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's like armor, you know, it's an icebreaker, but it's also armor.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's like more singing means less talking and the less opportunity to say harmful things.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: I feel that the way she writes about this in her autobiography is that Nancy Earle
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: who became her lifetime partner.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the other women that she meets in Austin really become her place of safety.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: She uses that word.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: I know that's a word we all use today, but she used it when she wrote her autobiography.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: I needed a place where I could feel safe.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: And because often,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: in the legislature and even in social places,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: she's the only black woman there.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: At the same time,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: other people I interviewed say,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: oh yeah,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: she brought Nancy Earle with her to parties and
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: They are together.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's an open secret.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, it's not something it's kind of like now we say, don't ask, don't tell.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't use that phrase then.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that maybe gives listeners some idea of what things were like because
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: they did socialize together.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: They had eventually owned a house.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: People came.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, though, at the same time, Jordan was not open.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: to discussions about this.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: It was sort of like a precondition to friendship was an acknowledgement that you
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: weren't going to ask questions.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think there is the similarity with the health issue.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: People knew, and other people who she worked with in Congress, they said, we knew she was in pain.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: We knew she was suffering, but we also knew not to talk about it.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: She didn't want anyone asking her questions about it, offering sympathy, none of that.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then later on, she'll say, this is my body.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for well into the 21st century.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think Paul Wellstone had MS.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Most politicians did not disclose weakness, physical weakness.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: It would make them unfit for office.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: And surely also her sexuality would have had that same impact.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: There's no question, I think, in her mind or in the minds of those around her.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: it's interesting as you were talking,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was making comparisons in my head to Eleanor Roosevelt,
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: who in many ways was an entirely different person than Barbara Jordan,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: circumstances,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: class,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: everything.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yet she too had her safe place with women, a largely lesbian circle.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: to which she would retreat from public life and where she felt safe,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: which courageous as Eleanor Roosevelt was about putting herself out there.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: She was also very shy and very, very awkward and so on.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just kind of an interesting comparison to think about what does it mean to be a public woman?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: So Mary Ellen, normally at this point, I would ask my guest why our listeners should read this book now.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: The election's over.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: We lost.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: How would Barbara Jordan want us to take this moment and move forward?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: Barbara Jordan never said this.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: Another activist said this.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: Don't mourn, organize.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that she would say that, look, racism is in America.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's part of it.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: She had a lot of optimism in the 70s.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that was tempered.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: You can see it in her speeches in the 80s.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: She knows what's coming.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: She sees Robert Bork.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: She denounces him at his hearings.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: And she says, this is a bad choice, guys, in the Senate.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: We want to be moving forward.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: She even uses that language.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is going to take us back.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so we see this now in how...
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: horribly gerrymandered our congressional and state districts are.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: This race was close.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: We know that Democrats represent far more in terms of voter will than what we see
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: in the Senate and that what we see in the House,
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: whether it's Wisconsin or North Carolina,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: it's horribly gerrymandered.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's anti-democratic.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: That has to be pushed back against.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think Jordan would say it's not what you would find hope in,
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: was how close this election was.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that really what caused defeat was not necessarily a lack of will or
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: determination of the majority of the American people,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: but these anti-democratic institutions,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: which are a direct legacy of slavery and segregation.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: And those are the things that have to be dismantled.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: So Jordan would recognize that.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: She would be very much of a realist in saying, you know, those are the things that have to be addressed.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I think she would also take great faith and hope from the activism and the
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: candidacy of courageous people like Kamala Harris and the women who supported her
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: and the importance of having someone like Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: Those things haven't gone away.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: The activism of black women hasn't gone away.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's never going to go away.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: That is here to stay.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: The Democratic Party as an institution really owes a lot so much to what these
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: women have achieved since Jordan's time and including her time.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: They led her to victory.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I think the Black vote is going to continue to be an important leverage.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think Black women are going to continue to play a key role in Democratic Party politics.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the gauntlet's been thrown down.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: We have to dismantle these anti-democratic institutions and legal decisions that
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: have led to this outcome.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's the task at hand.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: the subversion,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: the destruction of the Constitution.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 39:19
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• 39:23
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• 39:27
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• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Why Now and Political Junkie are written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
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• 40:14
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